Association between successful weaning from nasogastric tube feeding and thoracic muscle mass in patients with aspiration pneumonia

This longitudinal, observational study included 146 patients with aspiration pneumonia from a single center. The primary outcome was successful weaning from nasogastric tube feeding during hospitalization, achieved in 46.6% of patients. A board-certified radiologist and a validated convolutional neural network model measured muscle and fat parameters from chest CT. Neither skeletal muscle parameters alone nor VFSS results alone were optimal for prediction, but a model combining the skeletal muscle index at the T4 level and VFSS results achieved an acceptable predictive performance (AUC ≥ 0.7). Limitations include the retrospective design, single-center data, relatively small sample size, and lack of muscle strength measurement. The findings suggest that thoracic muscle mass assessment may be a useful supplementary tool for predicting weaning success in this population.